The first question that an online marketer would have is, how to know one’s digital marketing customers? What is a potential client or lead?

In this e-world, digital marketing plays a crucial role.

There are several ways to find the right audience a.k.a. a potential client in an online marketing world. Based on my past experiences I am going to share with you a comprehensive list of ways to find the target audience for your digital marketing campaign.

Let us start with understanding a few basic terms.

What is a potential client or a lead for your business?

A potential client, also known as a lead in marketing terminology, is the contact data of a person who fits the target description that meets your goals and objectives.

A basic lead may have only the person’s name and email address. If this lead happens to perfectly fit your targeting, you may well use it in your campaigns.

Starting from the brainstorming sessions to further discussion among the team players before you build an understanding and figure out who are your targeted and enriched leads are - it takes a lot of effort from initiation to delivery.

How are Goal, Strategy, Objective and Tactic different?

A goal is a broad primary outcome. Example: monetizing existing leads and customers

A strategy is the approach you take to achieve a goal. Example: create content such as welcome emails that convey to people how to use your product or service

An objective is a measurable step you take to achieve a strategy. Example: Create Visual and engaging content

A tactic is a tool you use in pursuing an objective associated with a strategy. Example: Buzzsumo

What is targeting in the marketing world for your digital campaign?

Targeting is when a potential client fits your pre-defined criteria, such as:

Business type/ model: strategy would differ for B2B and B2C for products and services, accordingly the marketing message will differ. So, it is important to bear in mind the people you are serving. For services, brand tonality matters whereas for products, visual assets need to be more abstract to raise awareness with a single goal. At the same time, B2C businesses focus on customers’ loyalty whereas B2B organisations work on building their brand identity.

Company size: start up, small, mid-size, large size enterprises

Interests, and more : will vary

Lead enrichment is what makes your potential client’s data complete. Generally, this includes information such as phone number, social media profile of person, gender, ethnicity, interests. You may also want to know additional details to make your proposition or message more interesting.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation (DX) is about using digital technology to solve traditional tasks rather than supporting traditional ways to enhance the process in any domains.

With digital transformation, a digital marketing campaign is no more a separate entity but an integral part of any kind of business, online or offline.

Here is the ultimate guide to your online business strategy that will guide you to move step by step and advise you to do a thorough check, so as to avoid any known failure. This way, you will build your business the right way, both online and offline.

What are the steps involved in building a successful business?

The First Step Should be a Business Understanding and Setting up Your Website Accordingly.

The steps involved in building your company’s website are:

Know your business and its industry trends

Be clear about what you are selling - products or services?

Do not mix your customers and their needs. There should be a clear understanding of who you are selling to, B2B or B2C, or a good mix of B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Customers).

A series of quick, short-term and long-term goals. Stick to the SMART goal-planning formula (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound).

Lastly, once you know your business and what you want to achieve, you can create a strategy and plans to achieve. Identify the key players and hurdles.

So, when your business model and revenue models are defined, you need to understand if the acquired leads are useful to push to sales.

Who are your qualified audience? How to find a qualified audience?

There might be a case in which you are getting traffic and leads to your website, but they are not maturing. So, to drive the right traffic to your website and improve organic leads and sales, we should first understand and then define what a qualified audience is. Also, you would need to determine who they are, what they value and how they use each channel at the various stages of their purchase journey, from interest and validation to decision and advocacy.

Figure out What is Important for your Business

Use the various tools from various channels to map your customers with their needs. Build Tire1 requirements. Google Analytics and search console data provide insight into what people are searching, how they are arriving, where they are arriving, their behaviour, and if they are converting. This is possible if you are fulfilling your customers’ needs. Facebook insights can provide niche information such as your business fans, while social media tools can shed light on what customers think about your products and services.

These digital marketing tools are like an armour that will help you win the digital marketing battle. Moreover, retargeting has been one of the most useful tools to pull up new clients. Integration of CRM with analytics has been very helpful in this realm.

Speak your Audience Language: Audience Lingo for Personal Touch

Two-way effective communication would be possible only when you understand the voice and tone your audience is using. Therefore, you need to be adept at adopting the audience lingo. Discovering the local phrases of the industry will help you use the dialect of your audience. One of the best ways is to talk to them, to know them. Social media listening tools will help, but should be parallelly used. This will help in giving a personal touch to your campaign.

Organic Keywords is Your Tire One Requirement

It is only after mapping your customers with their needs and building a customer’s persona, that you will be able to derive the set of targeted keywords. Once you have the keywords, categorize them into informational (broader scope), navigational (Specific, refined scope) and transactional (find products/ services that lead to purchase).

Retargeting is Likely to Convert, Stay Focused

Digital channels do offer the retargeting option, so you must use it to the fullest. This will help in building a qualified audience list.

With your KPI, you can measure the success of your digital campaign and ensure that you are targeting the right audience in the right fashion.

How do Digital Marketing Strategies Work?

Marketing is more of an art than science and therefore, is subjective. So, being an artist you have to improve your craft.

Set SMART Goals to Measure Your Site Performance: This will help define what you want to achieve with your marketing strategy

Know Your Customers: Market research and industry knowledge will help you carve the straight path for your marketing.

Competitor Analysis: Know your direct and indirect competitors

Human Touch is Important: Work with customer-friendly professionals and trusted customers. Feedback is very important.

Track your Campaign Quality: Is your content adhering to and up-to-date with the industry standards? Is it engaging customers?

Quality Testing: Recursive testing in various forms helps always.

Bottomline is Analytics: The measurement tool you choose will depend on the product and your goals.

Does my solution target a general, specialized, or super-narrow niche?

Are customers served locally or online?

What expectations prevail about similar solutions on the market?

Channels

Leading Indicator

Tertiary KPI

Secondary KPI

Primary KPI

SEO

Impressions

Site Visits

Conversions

Revenue

PAID (PPC)

Impressions

Click Through Rate

Conversions

Cost per Acquisition

Social

Followers

Engagement

Site Visits

Conversions

Emails

Delivery Rate

Open Rate

Click Through Rate

Conversion Rate

Referrals

Referral gained

Site visits

Conversions

Revenue

Content

Content views/ visits

Bounce Rate

Content shares

Conversions

I would make Organic SEO my fulcrum for Envigo Digital Marketing strategy. Do keep an eye on leading indicators, a quantifiable metrics of digital marketing that show time and effort impact. Please avoid vanity metrics. Feel free to get a free website audit done today before you choose your digital channel as a fulcrum.

About author

Rakhi Chowdhary

Currently, an SEO manager at Envigo Marketing Pvt. Ltd., Rakhi Chowdhary with over 12 years of SEO experience in an array of industry verticals, is focused on leveraging her expertise across industries for different service areas. She has successfully created and managed campaigns for various promotional strategies.